


Faster Horses

by RedheadAmongWolves



Series: For Which We Were Born [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Case Fic, Grey!Holden, Holden is Will and Hannibal's Son, Morally Ambiguous Character, Murder Husbands, Referenced cannibalism, Verges on dark!Holden cause ya girl loves some murder family vibes, brief descriptions of violence, oh yeah baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 11:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20446742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedheadAmongWolves/pseuds/RedheadAmongWolves
Summary: “We’ve got a, uh, case we can’t quite figure out,” he tells them. Holden and Bill wait patiently. The cop’s fingers fumble as he pulls out a small packet of crime scene photographs, darting a glance over his shoulder at the near-empty diner.Holden passes half the stack to Bill and looks down. And, suddenly, this isn’t like every other case at all.





	Faster Horses

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a comment by the lovely DPHM (aelijah85)!!! Thank you thank you I hope this is what was desired but golly I wanna do so much with this universe 
> 
> Story still set in Mindhunter’s canon time period, though the events of Hannibal have been shifted to take place a few decades beforehand, so that it works that Holden is Hannibal and Will’s son. Technology has also been edited to match that time period (though I have no idea how international payphone calls work lmfaooo).

They’re in a little town a few hours south of Baltimore, in the parking lot of the local precinct after wrapping up a talk, when the cop catches Holden’s eye. He’s lit by the orange glow of a street light, shoulders high and anxious at his ears, casting furtive glances towards them every few seconds.

By now, it’s an old song and dance: Holden nudges Bill lightly in the ribs where he’s fishing in his briefcase for the car keys, tilts his head slightly in the direction of the light. The cop shifts on his feet, worrying at a cigarette between his lips, and Bill’s lips quirk.

“Five minutes,” Bill says, but Holden shakes his head and sips from his paper cup of coffee.

“Five _seconds_,” he counters, and sure enough, as they watch, the cop squashes the cigarette under his toe and half-scurries across the parking lot to Bill and Holden’s car. They turn to greet him with a smile.

Ten minutes later they’re in yet another greasy spoon diner, tucked in a booth in the back. The cracked vinyl scrapes at the seat of Holden’s pants.

“Thanks, Marjorie,” the cop says to the waitress pouring their coffees, because of course this is yet another small town where everybody knows everybody. Holden is always torn between fascination and dismay at how dreary each town they roll through is. The world seems steeped in grey, sucked of its color, its mystery. He’s making a career out of dissecting the tragic backstories of murderers and deviants, mostly because, as is revealed to him in every precinct, every diner: ordinary people are far too predictable.

The nervous cop introduced himself as Tommy, and he can’t be more than a few years older than Holden, though he tries (and fails) to appear older with his ginger rat-whiskered mustache. He’s still hunched, dropping his voice to a whisper even though the diner is near empty and Marjorie is sauntering away, coffee pot in hand, humming along to the radio.

“We’ve got a, uh, case we can’t quite figure out,” he tells them. Holden and Bill wait patiently. The cop’s fingers fumble as he pulls out a small packet of crime scene photographs, darting a glance over his shoulder.

Holden passes half the stack to Bill and looks down. And, suddenly, this isn’t like every other case at all.

The blood is rushing in his ears; Tommy’s voice sounds like it’s reaching him from underwater. “Found the first body about two weeks ago, but we’ve been coming up completely dry on suspects. We’re a small town, barely any crime at all, ‘sides a couple drunk drivers or kids hitting up a convenience store here and there. Not even the odd domestic violence complaint.”

Not that’s been reported, a voice in Holden’s head says distantly. His throat is dry. He’s still staring at the red-stained scene before him.

“We were starting to think it’d been a drifter, just a random crime by some vagrant with a sick sense of humor on his way through, but then the second body cropped up three days ago, and we’re lost. But, I mean. You know what it looks like, don’t you?”

Only the shift of Bill thumbing through his half of the photographs startles Holden back to movement. He sifts through the pictures numbly, each one confirming what he already knows. Bill spreads them out across the laminate table and their glossy film catches the glare of the lights.

Bill speaks first. Holden tries to mentally shake himself out of his stupor. It’s the last thing he expected to find in this sad little town, but it’s not going to be the thing that rips everything he’s worked for to shreds. He’s been prepared for this all his life. Well, not this exactly, but he’d always been taught where the emergency exits were located, so to speak.

“This is...” Bill sounds incredulous. “This is the Ripper.”

It’s not, Holden knows, because the real Chesapeake Ripper is currently in a chateau in the south of France, but the photographs are near replicas to the ones he found in the Tattle Crime archives when he was nine and curious.

“Hannibal Lecter went over a cliff two decades ago,” Holden says, because Bill’s looking to him for comment. “It’s a copycat.”

“No body was ever found,” Bill reminds him, as if he needs reminding, but Holden still shakes his head.

“It’s a copycat.” He picks up a picture of the second body, sets it beside the first. Both victims are young adult men, probably early 30s, both white with brown hair, both clean shaven and physically fit. They’re both stripped of any clothing, turned face-up in a cornfield, eyelids cut away so they’re staring unseeing at the sky and mounted, gruesomely, on antlers.

Holden feels a brief pang of sympathy for them, that they had to die in such a boring place, and worse, in such an unoriginal way.

“The Ripper never had an identifiable pattern between his victims. No facial, racial, gender, or sexual orientation connections,” Holden explains. “And look at the antler entry and exit wounds-- they’re messy. There’s no blood drainage. This isn’t the work of a skilled surgeon.”

“But there are organs missing,” Tommy speaks up, voice strangled. Bill and Holden look at him. Holden had almost forgotten he was there. “The, ah, heart from the first, liver from the second. And,” he goes green around the gills, “there were… teeth marks, in the second one. A chunk of flesh missing from, uh, from the upper thigh.”

The pictures, upon closer inspection, prove as much. Still, “It’s not the Ripper,” Holden says again. “Sure, Lecter never had a geographical preference for his victims, but two kills back-to-back in the same place wasn’t his calling card. He enjoyed his unpredictability.”

“How much of this have you released to the press? Have you identified the bodies?” Bill asks. Holden takes a pull from his mug to regroup, the coffee hot and bitter and refreshingly, groundingly terrible on his tongue, and mercifully his hands don’t shake around the ceramic. He’s not quite sure if it’s fear or adrenaline spiking through his bloodstream at the moment.

Tommy nods. “We haven’t-- uh, besides notifying the families, we haven’t made any of this public. Don’t want to spook anybody. First guy is Pete Rickman, he’s a student at the junior college in Baltimore, home here on holiday for the long weekend. Second is Owen Townes, works at the Piggly Wiggly. Worked,” he amends to past tense with a grimace. “Townes was on my high school football team with me. Quarterback.”

“No real pattern there,” Bill hums. “And we can’t be sure our guy didn’t follow Rickman down from Baltimore and circle back for Townes to draw us away from the city.”

“Any sexual damage?” Holden asks, as Tommy starts to fiddle with the sugar packets.

“No,” Tommy answers. “Just the placement of the bite was… questionable.”

This just in, homophobia is alive and well. At least Bill doesn’t clench his jaw anymore at the implication. Jerry Brudos’ little shoe show had been the nail in that coffin, of expecting any semblance of societal norms.

Holden studies the images again. His initial shock subsided, the differences between these murders and the murders of Hannibal Lecter are stark. Hannibal was-- is-- elegant at his most base, each kill a sonnet, composed by a master who spent years perfecting his craft. These are the fumblings of a child, pretending at being the big scary Ripper, but why? Just hero worship gone too far? Or is there a deeper motive, a path to follow back, a riddle to unravel?

God, Holden loves his job.

“First kill was emotional. He tore out the heart, mimicked the style of a famed killer. Second kill was because he got-- literally-- a taste for it. This time he tried the liver. Went a little mad, wanted to see what it tasted like straight from the source. Hence the bite.”

“A ‘little mad’?” Bill snorts.

“He let his curiosity get the best of him,” Holden amends. “We do know a few things though. He’s inspired by Lecter, probably has similar career aspirations. And if he’s trying to follow in Lecter’s footsteps, we’ve got one more chance to catch this guy.”

“H-how do you mean?” Tommy asks. There’s sweat at his temples, poor sucker.

“Lecter hunted in sounders of three,” Bill answers for him. “He’s got one more kill before he’ll vanish.”

Tommy’s eyes widen. “But where do we start?”

Holden turns back to the photographs, but Bill straightens suddenly, and Holden can practically see the lightbulb go on over his head.

“We’re what, an hour or so from Virginia?” he asks. Tommy nods at him, brow furrowed. “You know who lives in Virginia?”

It dawns on Holden too, sending a little thrill up the back of his spine. “Jack Crawford.”

“The Guru himself. Who knows Hannibal Lecter better than him?”

Well, or so Bill thinks. Holden just smiles.

Later, they’re back in their room at yet another motel with scratchy sheets and watered down shampoo, and Bill’s got the crime scene photos spread across his comforter. Tommy had been all too happy to hand them over. Bill puzzles over them as he undoes the buttons of his shirt.

Holden unknots his tie, but leaves his clothing on. He lingers by the door, waiting for Bill to notice.

Bill, of course, does. “You turning in?” he asks, one eyebrow raised.

Holden jingles a handful of change in his pocket. “Nah, saw a payphone out front. I’m due for a call to my folks. I’ll be quiet when I come back in.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m not tired yet anyway. Besides, I’m not sure I trust anyone not to eat me in my sleep right about now. The Ripper case always gave me the heebie jeebies.” He says it with a grin, but Holden can see the edge to it. The Ripper is the FBI’s personal boogeyman. The monster that lurked through its halls, under its beds. To be so close to it, even years after its trail went seawater cold, would be a little unnerving to anyone.

Holden offers him a smile in return before ducking outside, hoping he seemed his normal self. As much as he got his father’s chameleon skills, he’s still his dad’s son too, and being at ease around others doesn’t always come easy when he’s preoccupied.

The parking lot is deserted save for a station wagon a few rooms down, so Holden crosses the pavement and slides the phone booth door shut behind him, dropping a few coins into the pay slot and resisting the urge to look over his shoulder lest a passerby thinks he’s up to something suspicious. He dials the operator, gives her the address he’d been given for exactly this purpose— communication otherwise is kept to letters, delivered to an innocuous farm in Avignon.

His dad answers halfway through the first ring. “Holden?” Will asks, urgent, “is everything okay?”

Holden relaxes immediately at the sound of his voice, and when he smiles, it’s genuine. “I’m fine, Dad,” he answers. “Is Tėtis there?”

“Right here,” Hannibal’s voice comes into the earpiece. “Where are you?”

“Maryland, a little ways from Baltimore,” Holden says. He’s met with silence. “You’ve got an admirer, Tėtis.”

“I won’t insult you by asking if you need us there,” comes Hannibal’s reply, and Holden huffs a laugh.

“No, nothing like that. This guy’s an amateur. He’s recreated the Cassie Boyle display twice, crudely, only with male victims. He has one more in his sounder if he’s following in your footsteps, but he’s got local law enforcement stumped.”

“And what about you?” Will asks, though there’s a note of pride in his voice that makes Holden stand up straighter. Holden has always been proud of the faith his parents have in him, that they can see themselves so clearly in him. He would’ve been proud to apply to the FBI with Will’s last name, if it wouldn’t throw up a million red flags and have him tossed in an asylum somewhere in loosely defined “protective custody.” “Tell me what you know.”

Holden gives the details of the case, the descriptions of the murders, where the photos have taken them so far. “It’s an homage of sorts to the Ripper, someone he wants to emulate, so I’m thinking it’s someone in psychology, or wanted to be in psychology but was turned away. Not medicine, though, since he’s recreating murders from later in the Ripper’s career, and there wasn’t any visible effort to make the deaths clean.”

“Rejection is a powerful motivator,” Hannibal hums, but Will falls quiet for a long moment. It’s a quiet Holden has been accustomed to all his life; forced retirement or not, his fathers never did leave their former lives behind, and Holden used to watch avidly as his dad would dive into another person’s mind as Hannibal scrawled a grocery list for the night’s meal. The perfect team.

There’s a slight intake of breath as Will returns to himself, and Holden’s fingers tighten on the phone, eager.

“You’re looking at it through the wrong eyes,” Will tells him. They’ve never solved his puzzles for him, only ever given him the clues he needed to snap the pieces into place. He’s needed less and less guidance the older he’s gotten, but he still loves each opportunity to see the masters at work. “You’re looking for the Ripper, when you should be looking as the Ripper.”

“Look more closely at the victims,” Holden clarifies, and Will gives a noise of agreement.

“See the victims as he sees them.”

“And why he picks the Ripper’s eyes to see them through,” Hannibal adds.

Holden smiles. He doesn’t get to hear their voices enough, and already he misses being with them in France, or Italy, his youth spent sitting at their feet on the verandah, looking out at the vineyards, listening to them talk and debate and plan. Some might say it was a lonely childhood, but Holden could never think of anyplace he’d rather be, until it came time for him to flex his own claws.

“Well, we know the real Ripper was trying to get a certain someone’s attention,” Holden teases, making his tėtis laugh. “Maybe this one is the same.”

“You said the first kill was emotional, right? Look there first, in case he’s trying to throw you off the scent with the second. There’ll still be traces of what he’s looking for in the second, because he’s driven by purpose, but nothing as concrete as the first,” Will says.

“Will the third be the messiest, or the most refined?” Holden muses. “If he knows it’s his last chance, will his emotions run away with him, or will he plan this one out?”

“Depends on the motivation,” Hannibal answers. “If his goal is to become the Ripper, it’ll likely be the kill that gets the most attention, is the most public. Especially if local law enforcement has been keeping it under wraps thus far.”

“But if his goal is to possess something he’s been denied, it may just come down to what he’s after. His third kill may even be the thing he wants the most, and it’s likely romantic, if his first trophy was the heart,” Holden considers aloud.

“You’ve got some fan club,” Will says to Hannibal.

“I’d rather they not sully the name,” Hannibal retorts, though Holden can hear him preen.

The lights of the station wagon flare to life as someone turns it on, and Holden startles at the rumble of the ignition. He knows there’s nothing overtly suspicious about what he’s doing, but it still feels odd, to be in the open air like this, talking to the two most wanted international fugitives, if the world knew they were alive. On the phone with a myth.

He tunes back to the conversation, interjects softly in their banter.

“There’s one more thing,” he says carefully. His fathers quiet, waiting. “We’re visiting Jack Crawford tomorrow.”

Right away, the silence turns stony. If Holden weren’t listening for it, he’d think the call dropped. When Hannibal finally speaks, there’s a growl in his voice, low and dark. Will stays quiet.

“If he makes one move against you, or is the slightest bit rude,” Hannibal snarls, “tell us. Immediately.”

Neither tells him not to go, because Holden knows that even through the haze of their distaste for Crawford, they can’t deny they’re more than a little interested in how Crawford will view Holden. Will their son be able to slip under the man’s nose, the undetected snake in the garden, just like his tėtis, or will he be too clearly Will’s, too clearly Hannibal’s, and too clearly Crawford’s worst nightmare?

“Be careful,” Will says, barely a whisper. Holden’s heart aches, though he tastes bitterness on his tongue.

“I will,” he replies.

They say their goodbyes, and the dial tone flatlines.

When Holden slips back into the motel room, Bill is, as predicted, still awake. He looks up briefly when Holden enters, before turning back to the photographs and his legal pad of notes.

“Parents okay?” he asks absently, and Holden allows himself a small smile.

“Just fine,” he answers, finally shedding the outer layers of the day. He ducks into the bathroom for a quick shower, and when he emerges in his sleep clothes, he gives a thoughtful hum that draws Bill’s attention. The man arches an eyebrow.

“I was just thinking,” Holden says, dropping onto the other bed, already dreading the box springs needling into his back, “What if we’re looking at this from the wrong angle?”

“How do you mean?”

“What if we should be looking through Lecter’s eyes? What if our guy isn’t paying homage directly to Lecter, but doing the things Lecter did to catch Will Graham’s attention? If our guy thinks himself in Lecter’s shoes, who is he casting in Graham’s?”

“But why the trophies, then?” Bill asks, but it isn’t an argument, more a genuine question.

“I think… I think the first trophy, the heart, was intentional. The act of a scorned lover. He’s been rejected, somehow, so he literally stole the heart of his target, so he could have what he’d been refused. But he’s not brave enough to kill the target himself. He’s trying to send a message.”

Bill taps the photos with the end of his pen. “The victims hardly share a similar background, though. Beyond skin and hair color, they don’t particularly look the same, either.”

Holden shakes his head. “Maybe it’s personality rather than appearance. They’re both driven, ambitious young men, or were once, hindered by socioeconomic class or family expectations as they were at the times of their deaths. There has to be a common thread. What was Rickman studying? Did our perp feel pity for Townes? Things of that nature.” Holden watches Bill scribble these questions on the notepad.

“So tomorrow we’ll look for that thread, and see if it overlaps with any of Crawford’s information about Lecter-- and Graham, per your theory. Our friend Officer Tommy called while you were out, said Crawford agreed to see us, though he said he didn’t sound too happy. I think Tommy went a little light on the details, or I’m guessing Crawford would’ve hung up on him. Not sure that’s a man who likes to dwell on the past.” Bill gathers up the pictures, slides them back into their envelope before busying himself preparing for bed.

He’s turned away from Holden, so Holden doesn’t bother trying to come up with the appropriate facial expression. “I mean, I don’t think I’d like to be reminded of it either, if the Ripper slipped through my fingers,” he says, climbing under his covers.

“I’d sleep with one eye open if I were him,” Bill says with a dry laugh, “at least till they find a couple skeletons in the ocean.” He tugs on the cord of the bedside lamp, and plunges them into darkness.

Holden doesn’t sleep.

It’s raining when they shuffle out of the motel the next morning. They grab hurried breakfasts from a nearby gas station before heading to the precinct, where they’re meeting to follow Tommy’s cruiser south.

The drive is quiet, for a while, just the low din of the morning radio talk shows between them, the kind of quiet they’ve perfected in all their hours on the road between cases, after they’d exhausted all routes of small talk and weren’t quite close enough to dive into the deeper things. Holden’s almost starting to doze, when Bill suddenly breaks the peace.

“You know, I am curious.”

He pauses deliberately, so Holden bites the lure. “About what?”

Bill steers the car towards their exit. Holden tracks the sweep of the windshield wipers across the glass.“I thought you’d be jizzing your pants in excitement to meet this guy. He’s your predecessor, isn’t he?”

Holden quirks a smile. “Of sorts.” And it is true, to a degree. If Hannibal and Will’s escape hadn’t sent Crawford’s marbles scattering across the floor, he might’ve been the hero to set up the Behavioral Science division as an official asset of the FBI. Instead Holden stepped into the place he’d vacated, and had to build the BSU up on his own few merits.

It’d make sense for Holden-- the Holden Bill knows-- to be excited. But it’s too late to force the enthusiasm now, or Bill would question its sincerity. Truth is, he’s just too wired; he so rarely gets to play a game where he’s the one in hiding, testing the limits of what he can get away with, rather than trying to coax the monster into the light. And underneath that lurks the anger, the hunger for vengeance for what this man had done to those Holden loves most. Forced them to flee, forced them to hide. He’d like nothing better than to eliminate this threat, if only so his dad wouldn’t feel so haunted, could stop looking over his shoulder. If only so his tėtis could make that meal he’s been planning for thirty years.

“Then what is it?” Bill asks, oblivious to the tightly coiled fury bubbling through Holden’s veins. Holden concentrates on controlling his breathing, timing it to the rhythmic swipe of the wipers.

“I’m just focused on the case.” That seems like a normal explanation-- Bill’s used to rolling his eyes at that. “We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to use preexisting data to stop a killer in his tracks. How often do we get to encounter a copycat? Usually people steer clear of recreating someone else’s crimes, because they know they get caught.”

“But Lecter didn’t.”

“He did,” Holden corrects, “He’s just also one of the few who managed to escape.”

They turn down a leafy street about a half hour outside Quantico, and the house they pull up to is a squat brick fortress, with two small windows facing the street, blinds shut with no signs of light leaking out from behind them. The lawn is well-groomed and impersonal in the kind of way that reads of a hired service, and there’s no furniture on the front porch. There’s no indication that anyone lives here, in fact, except a note on the mailbox that asks mail be delivered at the front door.

It’s certainly not the place Holden expects Jack Crawford, former revered Guru of the FBI’s Major Crimes unit, to live, but he supposes that must be the point. This is a man who has ghosts by the dozen at his heels. Holden might hide too, if he weren’t one of them.

Bill turns off the engine and they climb out, hurrying through the rain to join Tommy in the driveway. He leads the way to the porch, giving Holden and Bill a last, desperate look before knocking loudly on the door.

A cacophony of barking roars to life, making them all jump. Tommy looks like he would rather be anywhere but here as he leans in closer to the wood and calls out to be heard over the ruckus.

“Agent Crawford? It’s Officer Tommy Washburn, we spoke on the phone?”

“Agent?” Holden whispers to Bill, who nods.

“He was never formally dismissed, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to retire. He’s on paid leave,” Bill whispers back, with a tilt of his head towards the manicured lawn, implying its maintenance came out of the FBI’s pocket.

Holden raises his eyebrows. “They might as well call it exile,” he replies, and Bill softly huffs his agreement.

Tommy knocks again, and the door is abruptly yanked open an inch, making the man flinch. A lock chain rattles. The snout of a pitbull shoves its way through the gap by their knees.

A dark eye peers out at them over the chain, and Holden thinks he sees a flash of something metallic that might be a gun.

“Badges,” a voice demands over the barking dogs. The three of them fish them out of their pockets and hold them up for inspection. The eye roves over them, before the door slams shut again.

“Heel!” they hear, and the noise stops as suddenly as it began. The lock chain rattles again as it’s undone, and the door opens a foot. A dark-clothed figure moves deeper into the house, what sounds like a small herd of animal nails clicking on the floor behind it, and the agents exchange glances before following.

Holden doesn’t know what he’s expecting of Jack Crawford himself, but what he finds is much different from the few photographs of the man framed in the higher hallways of the FBI.

The man’s house is messy, very much a hideaway, and very much lacking a woman’s touch. The air is stuffy and faintly artificial, human smells masked by scented chemicals. There’s dog hair everywhere, though there’s not much in the way of furniture, or possessions in general: there’s an armchair and a couch in the living room the entry opens into, and Holden can see a simple breakfast table down a hallway to the left, but there are files everywhere, in every available space, and mugs balanced on top of files, and take out containers forgotten behind stacks of files. There is no art on the walls, but as they enter the living room, they’re faced with an enormous wall absolutely covered with tacked-up papers and photographs and notes, and at the center of it all, in twin mugshots, are Holden’s fathers.

Jack Crawford himself settles into the armchair beside this wall, which Holden almost wants to call a shrine. His eyes are fixed to the scribbles and crime scene photos, a comprehensive history of the relationship of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, pieced together by a madman. He thinks he even sees a piece of yellow legal paper labeled “lecture notes” in his dad’s handwriting. What Holden would give for a moment alone with this wall. It’s like Crawford’s brain spattered on the drywall.

“Sir, this is Special Agent Bill Tench and Special Agent Holden Ford, with the FBI?” Tommy is saying, voice cautious, and Holden finally tears his eyes away to face Crawford himself. There’s a small pack of muscular dogs milling at his feet who growl at Bill and Tommy, but when they see Holden, he abruptly finds himself surrounded by the little cluster. He bends down to pet them.

“They’re guard dogs,” Jack Crawford says, ignoring Tommy. His voice is gravelly with age, but no less commanding than Holden had imagined. “So no one can sneak up on me. Though they seem to have their weaknesses,” he observes. Holden can’t tell if he sounds more suspicious or disapproving.

“I grew up with dogs,” Holden replies, straightening and offering out a hand. “They can probably tell.”

Crawford shakes it, peering at him. Holden carefully maintains eye contact. Crawford’s face is creased with wrinkles, unshaven, eyes set deep in dark circles like he hasn’t slept a full night in years. His close-cropped hair is white and thinning, and his expression is splintered. This is a man whose whole world had been yanked out from under him, and no small part of it had been his own fault.

Holden introduces himself again, and Crawford drops his hand. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with us,” Holden says politely, as Crawford motions for them all to sit. Bill and Holden take the couch, while Tommy brings in a chair from the breakfast nook. A bloodhound settles near Holden’s feet, but he doesn’t interact with it, not wanting to draw more of Crawford’s ire.

There’s no offer of coffee or a cigarette, but Holden isn’t really expecting one. Something tells him hospitality isn’t one of Jack Crawford’s primary concerns.

“It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” Bill says, playing the flattery angle, but Crawford levels him with a flat look.

Crawford turns to Tommy instead. “You said two bodies?”

“So far,” Holden jumps in. “We have reason to expect a third. Our perp’s recreating the Chesapeake Ripper cases, sir. In particular Cassie Boyle, as of the moment.”

It’s like the air in the room drops ten degrees. Crawford’s face ages years before their very eyes. He hardens to stone, mouth set in a grim line, and a dog whines at his feet as if sensing the energy change.

Bill jumps in again, but there’s the tiniest quiver of hesitance at the edges of his voice. “We were hoping you might be able to provide some insight we might be missing, seeing as--” Bill studiously avoids looking at the wall behind Crawford’s head-- “You’re so familiar with the case,” he finishes.

“The current angle we’re exploring is our man sees the Ripper as an idol, a role model of sorts, and he’s using his methods to get the attention of someone else, that he’s casting in the place of Will Graham,” Holden explains. “Since the past is referenced so heavily in the recreations of the murders, we think it might be at play in the other aspects of the case that we’re not privy to yet. Is there anything you can tell us about the Cassie Boyle case, or the Ripper case in general, that might be of some assistance?”

Crawford scrubs a hand down his face with a sigh. “The Cassie Boyle case was not Hannibal Lecter’s first kill, not by a long shot, as we now know,” he begins. The words sound rehearsed, robotic, dull. Holden is abruptly overcome with something that feels like disgust. This is the man who chased his parents from their lives? This is who has kept Holden himself from being who he truly is? This weak, paranoid old man?

“But it was the first Chesapeake Ripper case we brought Will Graham onto, even if we didn’t know it was the Ripper at the time,” Crawford continues, with an absent look at the dog settled by Holden’s feet. “Cassie Boyle was killed after Lecter and Graham first met. The Ripper’s presence escalated even further after Graham’s involvement.”

“Lecter was testing the extent of Graham’s abilities,” Bill says, echoing last night’s conversation. “Do you think our guy might be toying with someone else? Someone possibly involved with the case?”

They haven’t looked too closely at Tommy’s coworkers, but Holden has a hunch feeling that there’s probably not someone on the small town’s force who he’d cast in the reenactment of Will Graham. Crawford seems to think so too, sending a thinly veiled look of reproach at Tommy, who is distracted with picking dog hair off his slacks, before shaking his head.

“You said the murders were messy, yes?” Crawford asks Tommy, sending the officer looking up with a startled snap of his neck, but he doesn’t wait for an answer before continuing. “Your man is an amateur, but a passionate one. He’s probably invested a lot of time into the criminal field, and its inner gossip, if he knows enough about the Ripper case to trace back to the first Ripper murder we brought Will Graham onto, because not even Freddie Lounds was privy to that. But he’s not as skilled as Lecter--”

“--So he’s probably someone who has failed to enter the forensics field,” Holden interrupts before he can think twice about it, reminded only by Bill’s elbow to his ribs. Crawford glares for a moment, but still grants him a nod.

“Look into rejected applicants for Maryland or Virginia law enforcement. If he’s copying Lecter, and appealing to someone he thinks of as Will Graham, it might even be an applicant for Quantico. He’ll be determined, so he’s likely applied more than twice.” Crawford reaches to the side table beside his chair to scrounge up a scrap of paper and a pen, and he scribbles something on the slip and passes it to Bill. “This is the number of an old colleague who works in the applications department at Quantico, she might be able to help you.”

“Even if we find our applicant, how do we know his target? Who is his Will Graham? Are we running with the idea that there’s a homosexual motivation?” Bill asks, voice heavy with implication. Holden watches Crawford stiffen in his peripherals.

“He picked one of the Ripper’s earlier displays for a reason. He’s sending the message that he’s at the beginning of his own transformation, but he’s also…” Holden thinks of a girl with long black hair, a girl who came and went before him, a girl whose name is never mentioned in the halls of a house in France.

As if reading his thoughts, Crawford edges in, voice somber. “The other person involved in the murder of Cassie Boyle was Abigail Hobbs. When Lecter killed Cassie, he wasn’t trying to protect Abigail, but Will was already deeply invested in Abigail’s life, as a side-effect of his empathy. Lecter knew how important she was to him.”

“The reason our perp hasn’t killed the object of his desires yet is because that person is caring for someone else,” Holden deduces. “And Graham was still teaching at the time of the Cassie Boyle murder, so we should look for someone on staff, or in administration. White male with brown hair, probably single, and likely with a dependant like a daughter, or a sick or elderly relative.”

“That should be enough to narrow down to a pretty slim field. I should probably call your contact now, before our guy moves again. How many applications should we be looking for?” Bill asks.

“More than four, I’d guess, and start with the most recent rejected applicants first,” Holden answers, and Crawford grunts in agreement.

Holden can tell BIll is biting back a quip about the number of applicants Quantico gets in a year, but he nods anyway, turning to Crawford. “Is there a phone I’d be able to use here, sir?”

Crawford nods, waving a hand at the kitchen. “In there.” Bill thanks him and makes his exit, leaving Tommy and Holden and Crawford in an awkward silence. The bloodhound yawns.

Until Crawford speaks, suddenly. “Tommy, would you make me a cup of coffee?” he says, the closest he’s sounded to polite since they arrived. Tommy leaps up, overager at the chance to leave, almost knocking over a stack of files and upsetting the bloodhound.

“Of course!” he insists, darting after Bill down the hall towards the kitchen.

Holden waits, because that was a thin excuse to get him alone if he’d ever heard one. Sure enough, as Tommy’s footsteps recede, Crawford turns to face him. He looks speculative.

He surprises Holden by motioning to the papered wall behind him. “I saw you looking. Go ahead. Have at it.”

Holden waits a second more, to see if Crawford’s just joking, but when no admonishment or jeer comes, Holden steps over the bloodhound and up to the wall, Crawford’s watchful stare prickling at the back of his neck.

His eyes roam hungrily over the newspaper clippings and notes and photographs. Up close he can make out the words scrawled in black marker, lines connecting scraps and excerpts. There are photographs from nearly every case his fathers told him about: among them the Wound Man of Jeremy Olmstead, the mounted carcass of Randall Tier, the smiling Doctor Sutcliffe, even-- and this must be Jack Crawford’s sharpest sting of masochism-- Beverly Katz. Each photographed death is as beautiful as had been described. Holden thinks briefly, wistfully, of the kind of interview transcript they’d get from a sit down with his very own parents.

“I know about you,” comes Crawford’s voice from behind, For a glacial-slow, horrifying second, Holden freezes stock-still, thinking he’s been found out. But no, his brain rationalizes, he didn’t do anything that would give himself away, and if he had, he doubts Crawford’s reaction would be this calm. The truth outs a moment later: “Called up a few old friends at the FBI. You’re the one trying to continue my work.”

This, however, also throws Holden off guard. He flicks a glance at Crawford, trying to gauge his reaction, but the man is regarding him impassively with one eyebrow arched.

Debating his methods of approach, Holden quickly chooses to go with Bill’s earlier angle of flattery. “In a way,” he says, giving a sheepish, submissive smile. “Following your footsteps, only we’re in the basement now. Climbing our way up the totem pole. Your work serves as our foundation.”

“Don’t fuck with me, you’re happy I’m gone,” Crawford snaps. Holden doesn’t have to pretend to look surprised. “The whole goddamn FBI just wants to sweep me under the rug and pretend I never happened.”

“I’m sure that’s not true, sir,” Holden says gingerly.

“I let a monster escape right out from under me,” Crawford challenges. “Let him into our house, door wide open.” He waves a dismissive hand at the wall. “What do you see? Answers? Or just crazed scribbles on a cell wall?”

Holden doesn’t answer him, because he’s not quite sure what he sees. Among lists of missing people and crime scene notes, there are clipped photographs of Italian piazzas and French boulevards, but they’re generic images, nothing of the neighborhoods of Holden’s childhood. Crawford is looking in the right direction, but it’s too dark for him to see. Or he’s too blinded by the past to see. He’s looking for the Will Graham he lost, the Hannibal Lecter he knew. He wants to convince himself the boogeyman isn’t real. It was all just a bad dream, and he’s going to wake up, any second now.

“Do you really think they’re still alive?” Holden asks after a moment.

Instead of answering, Crawford repeats himself. “Tell me what you see.”

In front of him, under the mugshots, Holden finds a photograph of a cliffside in harsh daylight, a bright blue sea stretching out into the horizon.

See, when Holden turned sixteen, his fathers had given him a choice. He could stay with them in Europe, travelling and studying and learning the family business, or he could start a new life, wherever and whatever that may be. Holden chose the middle road: he moved to America, enlisted his fathers’ contacts to create a fake history, chose his new last name from the first car he saw on the streets of Brooklyn. He had been raised by monsters; he wanted to see what made the others different. He wanted to see what made them tick, to maybe begin to understand the darkness nestled deep inside of himself. To understand, to one day be able to use as he wished.

It seems that day has come.

He closes his eyes, and lets himself fall.

He finds himself on the cliffside, only it’s night, and the stars are pinpricks in the heavy quilt of a sky. The moon is full and bright through the swarming clouds, illuminating the stained concrete, and Holden can practically smell the tang of the sea air, hear the din of waves dashing themselves to foam on jagged rocks far below.

Two figures in tattered white clothes appear at the cliff’s edge. As he watches, he sees Will grasp Hannibal’s shoulder, sees Hannibal press his cheek to Will’s hair. Holden bites back his smile.

“They went over the cliff in each other’s arms,” Holden tells Crawford, his voice far away, even to his own ears. “Maybe Graham pulled them, maybe Lecter let him. The blood was black as ink. It reflects the light in the moonlight.”

He opens his eyes and turns to look over his shoulder, but Crawford’s eyes are downcast, staring at his clenched fist, but just like Holden, whatever he’s looking at is miles away and years past. Holden could almost pity him, if he were anyone else’s son.

But he isn’t, and this man doesn’t deserve peace, he’s decided. His voice is too loud in the thick quiet of the room. He doesn’t temper it.

“What happens if they’re alive? Why not just let them stay gone?”

“They’re murderers,” Crawford says, brow furrowed as he turns his gaze on Holden. “Fugitives.”

“A man who lives in fear of the past doesn’t have a future,” Holden says curtly. He follows it up with a pretend wince. “Sorry. My father always told me that.”

His false apology falls on deaf ears.

“Because they are still alive,” Crawford bites out, “Lecter is more than likely still killing, and he’s got Will Stockholm-ed around his pinky finger.”

“They seemed happy enough when they went over that cliff. They weren’t alone anymore.” You abandoned Will, Holden wants to say, and he still survived you, and that’s what you hate.

Crawford’s mouth twists into a bitter imitation of a smile. He curls his fingers into a tight fist, knuckles blanching against the dark fabric of his trousers. “What about you, oh heir apparent? You always wanted to hunt down killers?” Crawford looks at him steadily, his tone heavy with derision and thinly veiled insinuation. “In my experience,” he says pointedly, “it’s the ones who want to crack open the heads of psychos that end up crawling into them.”

For a moment, Holden can see the man Crawford used to be, the feared and admired giant lumbering through the halls of Quantico, barking orders that people followed without question, solving cases others thought unsolvable. He sees the man his dad trusted, sees the man his tėtis considered enough of a threat to befriend, to carve his way behind enemy lines.

It makes Holden’s blood boil under his skin, hot and angry and vengeful, and he listens to Bill hang up the phone down the hallway, hears the footsteps tapping down the hardwood towards them from the kitchen.

Outwardly, Holden huffs a polite laugh. “It was either that or culinary school,” he says lightly, just as Bill and Tommy round the corner.

“We’ve got a match,” Bill says, triumphant, holding up a piece of paper. “Son of a bitch applied five times to Quantico and Baltimore PD in the last three years, and he’s listed as a family friend of one of the professors— scored a reference letter he’s reused on every application. I’ll eat my hat if it isn’t him.”

Crawford, when Holden turns to face him, is staring at Holden with wide, wild eyes, flickering rapidly as they search for something in Holden’s perfectly blank expression. Holden would kill to smile at him, let him see beneath the person suit, let him know that the monster is still happily at play in the FBI, that Crawford’s mistakes will never be righted. “Is everything alright, sir?” Holden asks instead, playing up the concern, but Bill steps in front of him to briskly shake Crawford’s hand.

“I’m so sorry to dash, sir, but we’ve got to get moving in case someone in admin tips off our guy. Thank you for all your help, it’s been a real privilege.”

Tommy shakes Crawford’s hand too, and scampers after Bill. Holden sticks out his hand, and Crawford takes it slowly, his grip dry. There’s a tremor, barely detectable, against Holden’s palm. It makes Holden smile broadly.

“Thank you, sir. I hope our paths cross again.”

Crawford doesn’t say anything. Holden pats the dozing bloodhound’s head as he leaves, but it barely thumps its tail on the hardwood.

They arrest their perp in Baltimore by evening, finding him in a tiny student apartment— get this— at the same school where Pete Rickman, his first victim, was studying forensic science. The flat is littered with photographs of one Professor Ted Ellis, a white, brown-haired man with a four-year-old daughter, and is also stuffed full of antlers, some broken, some plastic, purchased from a hunter’s cabin near Tommy’s small town as per a receipt, and there’s a bag of vegetables in the fridge with the Piggly Wiggly logo. There’s a half-chopped liver on the kitchen counter covered in maggots. Tommy runs out to throw up in the bushes outside and doesn’t reappear.

Like Holden said, ordinary people are far too predictable.

Once their guy’s tossed in the back of a cruiser and looking at a life sentence in a tiny room with no doors, if not the chair, Bill and Holden bid their farewells, and climb into their car. The rain has cleared, and there’s a bright violet sunset peeking over the receding clouds. And a road school session in Ohio waiting for them.

“Mind if we make a detour first?” Bill asks, turning on the ignition. “Play tourist for a minute?”

“What did you have in mind?” Holden asks, amused.

“Lecter’s house is still empty,” Bill grins.

The Lecter mansion looms over its neighboring houses, stately and self-assured even as it falls into disrepair. It’s been for sale by the Bureau for years, Holden knows, but its past is too bloody for a fresh coat of paint to cover up, and it’s too much of a tourist attraction to bulldoze. So it sits empty, garden dying, trees drooping, a tomb. Holden has the strange feeling that it’s waiting.

Bill pulls the car up alongside it and they step out. Bill goes up the pathway to the front door, cupping his hands around his eyes to see inside the dark glass, but most of the windows are blocked with plywood, or streaked with dirt.

Holden watches from the open door of the car, toes just shy of the lawn’s dead grass, and looks up at the house that he would have been raised in, in a different life. He pictures a young version of himself, tumbling through the hallways with the dogs, reading in the cavernous library, learning to cook at his tėtis’ side in the kitchen while his dad sat at the counter, smiling as he looked on. Another life. He’s not sure if it would have been better, though.

“Jesus, this place gives me the chills,” Bill mimes a shiver as he crosses the lawn. “Doesn’t make a split-level in Virginia seem all that bad, yeah?”

“Depends on your definition of hell,” Holden replies. Bill laughs.

Holden buys a postcard from a gas station on the way out of town. It’s garish, meant to look like a tabloid, a replica of a Tattle Crime spread without the copyright infringement. “Come eat in Baltimore!” the front proclaims, with a picture of Hannibal Lecter in a poorly drawn cartoon chef’s hat, “before Baltimore eats you!”

He scrawls the Avignon farm’s address in the send-to, then Jack Crawford’s address as the return. He doesn’t write a message. He stamps it and slips it into a mailbox on the corner before jogging back to Bill, waiting in the car with their coffees.

Perhaps it’s time his fathers paid a visit home.

**Author's Note:**

> This was so much fun to write!!!! My lil cannibal boys.
> 
> Title taken from this quote from Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses’,” implying that Holden knows everyone better than they know themselves, and also Will and Hannibal are the super fast horses who got away from the horsecatcher. kachow. ~metaphors~
> 
> Definitely super hand-wavy on how Holden is both Will and Hannibal’s son bc naH SON WE DON’T DO MPREG IN THIS HOUSE like respect but also i’m good w/o
> 
> do not own/profit from hannibal and/or mindhunter disclaimers disclaimers disclaimers (is this still a thing?????)


End file.
